Punit Gandhi, Ph.D

Title: Quantifying asymmetry in biological systems

Abstract. Symmetry often seems visually apparent in real biological systems, even when these systems are not exactly invariant under the associated transformation. It can therefore be challenging to apply the stringent mathematical definition of symmetry to biology in meaningful ways. I'll discuss a flexible, entropy-based method for quantifying the asymmetry and how this can lead to a notion of approximate symmetry. Its usefulness will be demonstrated in simulated and real biological systems, with dynamics of the approximate symmetries occurring on both developmental and evolutionary timescales.